Monday, 11 February 2013

Hiding from phantasms: the new American WayOf Anxiety. Manufacturing fear, perhaps our Most
Important Product, now that GE no longer makesThose problematic reactors. Or do they?
Would we know, either way? Mere links in the chainThat contains us, as we are. We can see the enemy

Coming from a great distance, and kill him, or At least hope it's him we've killed -- does it really matterAs long as the technology gets a workout
And we can walk away with no blood on ourLatex surgical gloves? We can change them
Every hour of every day. We'll feel a lot safer that way.

Or then again maybe we won't. And maybe the targetOf opportunity will turn out to have been our --
Yegads -- friend. But can we really afford to haveFriends without compromising our security?
And what if there was an error in the scan,What then? Maybe we won't know what we've got

Coming to us until it pulls up silently at the door
In the dead of night, and we awaken in a cold sweatAnd check to make sure everything's lockedUp tight. But what if our locks don't hold? And when we hear
It creeping up the stairs, can we be sureThe automatic guidance systems have kicked in

As advertised? And what if the lack of a human
Pilot's cockpit vision should prove critical?Are our eyes like the eyes of Laura Mars?Can it really be that every living thing Upon which we train our technological Gaze then dies? That would seem a bit unfair.

And we're basically decent people. So don't stare too hard.

One sheet poster for Italian release of the film Eyes of Laura Mars(1978): image by D68 art+design, 20 April 2012

HiMAT Remotely Piloted Aircraft Synthetic
Vision Display. This is a synthetic out-the cockpit-window 3D
perspective view created using a visual display. The object in the
foreground is a 3D model of the HiMAT nose probe, and in the distance we
see terrain and a runway. From Shahan Sarrafian, NASA:
"Simulator Evaluation of a Remotely Piloted Vehicle Lateral Landing Task
Using a Visual Display", NASA Technical Memorandum 85903: image by ISoar, 5 February, 2008 (NASA)

A synthetic vision seems about all the vision we got left: an ominous all-seeing eye and a nowhere heart. (That first photo sets the mood). Paranoia is an easy sell nowadays. Like children, we love to scare ourselves. It’s a growth industry, and that’s what counts.

Streisand! That would've been unfortunate casting. I mean, she was fine for something like What's Up, Doc?, but Faye Dunaway--the way she hearkens back to stately, statuesque starlets of black-and-white days--is so much better for Laura Mars. I remember her roiling my hormones when I was watching Puzzle of a Downfall Child on TV. I was about 12. I've always liked her.

The producer of this somewhat flimsy vehicle, Jon Peters, was "dating" Streisand, which caused him to buy John Carpenter's spec script, with the idea Streisand would play the lead. But she adjudged the script a bit too kinky, it seems, so the role went to Dunaway. (For better or worse.) But Streisand liked the torch song from the film, "Prisoner", which she considered a good fit for her power-ballad chops (would one call them that?)